Robert Mostyn

Session Info

Robert Mostyn

Rob Mostyn begun his IT career in 1982 in Sydney working on mini computers. In 1985, while in the UK, he came across the Macintosh and his whole view of computing shifted to both the Mac (the graphical user interface) and Omnis at the same time. He returned to the UK in 1994 where he began working for Omnis Software which lasted until 1996 when he became an independent developer. Industry exposure has included: health care, merchant banking, mortgage financing, entertainment, manufacturing, foreign exchange risk management, fisheries, time share resort sales, resort management, client logistics interaction, and graduate recruitment. Working with Omnis from single user systems, to small office, to SQL, Classic to Studio conversion, through to web work since 2000. For the last 3 years Rob has been designing a software solution to enable a global environmental accounting system.

Best compliment he ever had: "Delivering in 6 weeks what a building society IT department failed to deliver within 2 years".

His maxim: "I love this environment and have thoroughly enjoyed the diversity of my career."

Session Info:

Outline of topic Classic to Studio Conversion:
Pros and cons of conversion v. rewrite
Thinking the transition through
- how much is visual and worth retaining
- any other transitions?
- - DML to SQL
- - V2 to V3 DAMS
- analyse code for Studio opportunities
- - distinguish non visual code
- - window families
- - menu instances and dynamic menus
- - table classes, or object classes, or both
- - multiple database access
- - std method names, critical for OO effectiveness
- - externals v. functions
- - is unicode of relevance
Before you begin
- what is an instance
- what is a task
- how does this compare to classic
- ensure FileFormat.ColumnName option is on
Hybrid approach
- converting the visual elements
- create core objects and methods
- begin with simple window classes
- considerations for complex window classes
- reports
The bigger opportunity
- changing the way you think
- pitfalls

Outline of topic Hacker Proofing Your Ultra Thin Web Application:
The simple view of life
The hacker and their mentality
Hacker objectives
- revealing information
- exploiting information
- breaking the application?
Vulnerabilities
- what are they?
- how Omnis protects us
- how we can still be exposed
- Apache's role
Protecting your code
- detecting hacker activity
- sanitising data
- appropriate reactions
- engage a professional vulnerability detection service
Review HackerSafe code

Rob's Fireside Consultations could cover:
sophisticated (multi library) applications
- is your application becoming large?
- do you have developer contention issues (working on the same classes)?
+ library architecture
+ user identification
+ library permissions
+ optimistic record locking

security
+ password management
+ data encryption
+ client v. server control (links with your business model)
+ timestamps
+ audit trails
+ menu and window permissions

cross platform libraries
- have you developed on one platform with the intention of deploying on another?
+ filenames
+ string tables
+ FileOps

practical OO examples
- do you wonder what the OO huff and puff is all about?
- is it academic tosh or are there practical benefits?
+ a demonstration of practical OO implementations
+ window classes, table classes, remote tasks

cross database considerations
+ Omnis and/or "proper" databases
+ bind variables
+ Postgress idiosyncrasies
+ sql functions

multiple concurrent omnis applications
- do you have (or want to have) distinct omnis applications for different people in the one environment?
- how do you manage updates to all the users?
- what if those users are spread over multiple sites (or multiple customers)?
+ review an architecture that supports multi site / multi user / multi application updates

applications that access multiple databases
- why would you want to do this?
- easy or difficult? Omnis v3 DAMs make this easy!
+ discuss scenarios where this is required
+ how Omnis makes this easy

application orientations
- fat client / citric client / thin client?
- ultra thin HTML pages
- web services
+ general discussion on pros and cons of each arrangement
+ focus on HTML applications:
+ + multi lingual support
+ + maintaining state (session management)
+ + server code (omnis) v. client code (javascript)
+ + HTML from page templates
+ + HTML from OO database templates
+ + caching for performance
+ + load sharing considerations
+ + content management systems


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